From Leo Babuta at Zen Habits: How do you deal with crit­icism? I think the first reaction for most of us is to defend ourselves, or worse yet to lash back. And yet, while crit­icism can be taken as hurtful and demor­al­izing, it can also be viewed in a positive way: it is honesty, and it can spur us to do better. It’s an oppor­tunity to improve. · Go to How to accept crit­icism with grace and appreciation →

From Leo Babuta at Zen Habits: Can you give someone crit­icism without hurting their feelings or making them angry? Can you do it kindly? I think that’s a difficult propo­sition for most people, but in truth it’s possible to give crit­icism with kindness and have a decent chance of having the person take it construc­tively. · Go to How to give kind crit­icism and avoid being critical →

From Lisa De Moraes in The Wash­ington Post: TV critics, bloggers and tweeters do not like Aaron Sorkin’s HBO drama “Newsroom.” At least the vocal ones at Summer TV Press Tour 2012 don’t. They don’t like his show’s speechi­fying (though it’s not much different from the speechi­fying of his “West Wing” and “The Social Network” char­acters). They don’t like the “Newsroom” women, they don’t like the men and, most of all, they don’t like jour­nalists being portrayed roman­ti­cally, ideal­is­ti­cally, hero­ically, rather than accu­rately. · Go to Aaron Sorkin and Jeff Daniels answer ‘Newsroom’ critics →

Worried about fake online reviews? Review Skeptic is based on research at Cornell University that uses language models to spot fake reviews with nearly 90% accuracy. Learn more about how it works at the Cornell Chronicle or The New York Times. · Go to Review Skeptic →

From BigThink: All orga­ni­za­tions make mistakes. The econ­omist Tim Harford argues that orga­ni­za­tions need to create a culture where these mistakes are revealed, exposed and corrected as soon as possible.

At Pixar, there’s this colle­giate envi­ronment, but people are able to disagree with each other and crit­icize each other’s work because they’ve developed a language. They call it “plus-ing.” So rather than spending all this time to say, “Hey, I really love what you’re doing, it’s really great work, blah blah blah” before you finally get to the crit­icism – which people have long since ignored because you’re wrapping it in all this fluff – instead you get straight to the crit­icism but you express it very posi­tively. You just say, “Well, that’s great, and wouldn’t it be even better if we did X? Wouldn’t it be even better if we did Y?” In a very positive way, very honest and direct, “Wouldn’t we improve if we did it this way?” Rather than getting fussed about whether the work as it exists is good or bad. It doesn’t really matter whether the work as it exists is good or bad. Can it be made better? · Go to Creating a culture of dissent →

From Michael Kaiser at Huff­ington Post: One of the substantial changes in the arts envi­ronment that has happened with aston­ishing speed is that arts crit­icism has become a partic­i­patory activity rather than a spec­tator sport. · Go to The death of crit­icism or everyone is a critic →

From ChangeThis: if you’re the target of vicious attacks, you’re going to feel it. Contrary to a popular, mistaken approach, I’m not going to tritely admonish you by saying ‘don’t take it personally.’ Instead, here’s a fresh path I’d like to take you on, and by the end of our journey, you’ll have a revi­talized outlook on how to make the best of bad words.” · Go to To Crit­icize Is To Publicize →